<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>the little crown by animorphology</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22665469">the little crown</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/animorphology/pseuds/animorphology'>animorphology</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Lesbian Yearning, Minor Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring, Minor Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril, Sexual Tension, Trans Dorothea, Trans Female Character, Trans Petra, enby claude, little vermont liberal arts school, very queer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:00:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22665469</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/animorphology/pseuds/animorphology</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A familiar heat returned to Edelgard’s cheeks. She was glad the professor was wearing normal clothes, a loose button-up tucked into high pants. She had left the last button loose, revealing a glimpse of her stomach. Edelgard found her eyes settling there, then quickly looked up at her blue eyes, always evaluating the students. Her own eyes had looked the same once, when the professor had first arrived, a new hire who seemed barely older than herself. Edelgard evaluated everyone. But something changed last year and instead of turning the cogs in her head the professor’s face halted them, heated them to melting, and left her a stuttering mess.</p><p>small liberal arts college in vermont AU  |  a bit of drinking, swearing, and sexual tension</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, Dorothea Arnault/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>138</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Femslash February</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. temperance (XIV)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>mx. despacito</strong> @claudevandamme<br/>popping champagne is better than sex and there’s way more jizz<br/>|<br/><strong>𝓤𝔀𝓤</strong> @hildavalentinegonerilcosplay<br/>(me, uncorking my vag): my pussy pop and urs don’t<br/>|<br/><strong>peg a cis</strong> @sir_ingrid<br/>it’s literally 9am please calm down both of you</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The party was almost over when Edelgard’s secret came out. She’d spent the night mixing progressively stronger gin and tonics, drinking those gin and tonics, and having intense conversations with Hubert in the nook behind the fridge. Hubert, incidentally, mixed an incredible old fashioned if you could plead with him enough, though they’d knock you out if you weren’t made of stern stuff. Annette was recovering from one on the couch half-asleep when she heard what happened, and that’s how everyone in the whole class knew that Edelgard was in love with the professor.</p><p>	It was Dorothea’s apartment, and Dorothea always hosted the best parties. Something about the pinups all over the walls, the tarot books on every side table, and the free-flowing wine made it a hot night whenever the senior class decided to celebrate, and on this night especially the vibe had quickly descended from back-to-school-get-together into almost-a-swingers-energy. The costumes helped. Dorothea and Ingrid had cooked it up, sometime over the summer when they had first starting dating (officially) and so when they announced at their weekly all-class lecture that the theme of the back-to-school party would be Garreg Mach: Fantasy College just about everyone lost their mind. Dorothea had found a gown with a high slit all the way past her waist and gold embellishments down the sleeves which had inspired the party, mostly because she wanted people to see it, and when Ingrid realized she would finally have an excuse to wear the full suit of armor she’d had hidden in her steamer trunk, plus to see Dorothea in something extra scandalous, it was a done deal. The party was that Saturday.</p><p>	Edelgard, of course, didn’t dress up. She hadn’t planned on going, really, partially for fear of the innate sexual content of being in Dorothea’s apartment and partially because she had a lot of work to do, but Petra had texted her that afternoon to say simply, “byleth is coming”. Petra knew, but nobody else. She and the professor had tea once a week, a standing date that made Edelgard warm with jealousy every time she mentioned it despite her continual refusal of Petra’s invitation to join them. They had tea together once, just Byleth and Edelgard, last spring when Edelgard was preparing to go home to sort out her father’s estate. Byleth had offered to go with her. Edelgard, already nervous, had stuttered for the first time in her life until the professor had smiled and said she wouldn’t have offered if she knew she would be so offended.</p><p>	“I’m not offended, I really—” She tried to finish a sentence, but found herself unable, her cheeks flushed and her eyes unable to meet the professor’s, instead settling on the small cutout in her top where her stomach was visible.</p><p>	“Edelgard,” said the professor, touching her trembling hand across the table, “it’s okay. Forgive me.” She withdrew to take another sip of tea. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she mused. Before it was over the professor had smiled again and said, “If you need anything, I’m here for you.” It only occurred to Edelgard that night that it was the first time she’d ever seen the professor smile.</p><p>	So when Petra, confidante of both the professor and Edelgard, told her she was coming, there was no time to prepare a costume. She spent half an hour pacing the length of her apartment before taking a shower, deciding not to shave her legs, and trying on different varieties of sweaters and baseball caps until she found perfect soft butch harmony. She showed up early.</p><p>	Ingrid was making guac. She could see through the window outside that Dorothea stood behind her with arms around her stomach and her chin on Ingrid’s shoulder, talking to each other in the soft voices you use only when you’re alone. Edelgard knocked. Dorothea looked around and widened her eyes.</p><p>	“I didn’t think you’d come!” she said as she opened the door. Ingrid put down a knife the size of a small sword and examined the avocado.</p><p>	“Hello, Edelgard,” she said, “I’m glad to see you.”</p><p>	“As am I.” Edelgard bowed slightly. She closed the door behind her.</p><p>	“Oh my god,” said Dorothea, “you don’t have to <em>roleplay</em> as medieval nobles. Can I please get you a drink?”</p><p>	“Yes, thank you,” said Edelgard. “I apologize for my failure to dress up, I hadn’t planned…” She trailed off, hanging her long red coat on the rack by the door. Four of the five already there were Dorothea’s, she recognized, and one was the simple black overcoat Ingrid always wore. Edelgard hung hers on the last peg.</p><p>	“That’s okay, Ingrid’s costume is enough for the both of you.”</p><p>	Ingrid’s suit of armor was nowhere to be seen. “I tried to put it on earlier but she stopped me,” she said.</p><p>	“It was ten in the morning and I can’t cuddle you like that.”</p><p>	“I thought you liked it.”</p><p>	“I do, babe, you look like you’re gonna slay a dragon for me.”</p><p>	“I would.”</p><p>	Dorothea handed her a glass of red wine. Edelgard went to smell it, her hand already twirling it around in the bowl, when she realized that wasn’t at her father’s estate anymore. It was a difficult adjustment, first when she arrived at the little Vermont college three years ago after spending her whole life in a sprawling house in Connecticut, and then when she returned there for the summer after spending so long with independence. She hadn’t been back since she left, preferring to stay the summers in the quiet town by the river, but this summer as her father’s health failed and it was time to come into her inheritance she realized it was necessary. That place held no happy memories. Perhaps once, when she still had her siblings, and before her father’s finance empire crashed, it had been home. Now she preferred to spend her time planning her future, walking through the empty streets at night (much to Hubert’s displeasure) and taking the occasional seminar with the professor. She wished the professor taught her house, she thought as she stared into the swirling red glass. The thought alone sent a tremor down her spine.</p><p>	“Edelgard?” Dorothea and Ingrid looked expectantly at her.</p><p>	“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”</p><p>	“I need to help Ingrid put on her armor. Would you mind being alone for a moment? Just make drinks if anyone asks. Everything’s on the counter.”</p><p>	“Sure.”</p><p>	“Thanks, Edie!” Dorothea said, and two of them disappeared upstairs, whispering. Edelgard heard Dorothea let out a brash laugh. She’d never heard Ingrid make a joke, but whenever she would mumble something under her breath to her girlfriend, Dorothea would break out in peals of laughter. There was something they shared, Edelgard supposed, that no one else could see. Something cruel stirred in her stomach. She tried to brush it away, but it lingered, a sort of ache for a secret like that. It was nothing. Edelgard sipped her wine.</p><p>	There was a knock on the door. Edelgard set down her wine and walked past the golden bust (very busty) in the entryway to open the door. Outside, standing on the whitewashed porch with a bottle of white wine, was the professor.</p><p>	“Hello, Edelgard,” she said, her impenetrable tone echoing in Edelgard’s ears, “I didn’t expect to see you.”</p><p>	“Hello, professor,” she said, stepping aside to leave the hallway open.</p><p>	“Are Dorothea and Ingrid here?” she asked. “I brought a hostess gift.”</p><p>	“They’re upstairs.” A familiar heat was returning to Edelgard’s cheeks. She was glad the professor was wearing normal clothes, a loose button-up tucked into high pants. She had left the last button loose, revealing a glimpse of her stomach. Edelgard found her eyes settling there, then quickly looked up at her blue eyes, always evaluating. She’d acted the same once, when the professor had first arrived, a new hire who looked barely older than herself, evaluating her with her own purple eyes. Edelgard evaluated everyone. But something changed last year and instead of turning the cogs in her head the professor’s face halted them, heated them to melting, and left her a stuttering mess. It was infuriating.</p><p>	“I’ll put this in the kitchen then.” The professor swept past her, brushing her shoulder without a look back. It was a moment before she called from the kitchen, “Would you like a G&amp;T?” Edelgard took a breath and strode in after her.</p><p>	“Sure,” she said, ignoring the wine on the table.</p><p>	“Wait—you’re twenty-one, right?” The professor was holding a bottle of gin in one hand and two tall, narrow glasses in the other.</p><p>	“Yes. January.”</p><p>	“You’re a Capricorn?”</p><p>	“I don’t know what that means.”</p><p>	“You’re definitely a Capricorn.” The professor was cutting a lime to quarters. “First gin, then a bit of lime juice, then the tonic.” Edelgard watched carefully, as if she was being instructed in class. “I’m surprised Dorothea invited me.”</p><p>	“Me too,” said Edelgard, before she could think. But the professor smiled. Another rare sighting. </p><p>	“I always wanted to go to a college party,” she said, handing Edelgard the drink.</p><p>	“You never did?” Edelgard wasn’t one for parties, but she’d been a few obligatory get-togethers every year to remind her classmates she wasn’t a total buzzkill.</p><p>	“I didn’t go to college,” Byleth said casually. “Maybe I would’ve, if I hadn’t gotten this job.” Edelgard watched her savor a sip of gin and tonic (heavy on the gin).</p><p>	“If you don’t mind me asking, professor, when exactly—”</p><p>	“Professor!” Dorothea burst into the kitchen, clanking footsteps following her. Ingrid appeared in full armor, looking more at ease than she ever had.</p><p>	“Hello, Professor,” she said with a bow. “It was kind of you to come.”</p><p>	“You look outstanding, Ingrid,” said the professor. “Thank you for having me.”</p><p>	Edelgard waited in the kitchen as Dorothea pulled the professor around the apartment, showing her a collection of records, a small carving of a black eagle on a pedestal that Ingrid had bought her for her birthday, a bathroom with a silk shower curtain, and a card she got from professor Manuela with a lipstick kiss inside. By the time they returned, Sylvain and Felix had arrived, carting Ingrid off to talk about boy problems, and Petra quickly swallowed the professor in a conversation about European rail, that French bitch. Edelgard shook her head. She liked Petra, and the way she could effortlessly make you feel welcome with a kiss on the cheek and a charming grammatical error that Edelgard suspected she did on purpose, but she didn’t date girls and the professor liked her more than Edelgard. That was the problem. Everyone liked Edelgard, as far as she knew, but nobody liked Edelgard the most.</p><p>	Except Hubert, she supposed. It was unclear whether Hubert actually liked her or just felt obligated to spend time with her since he always had. Either way, she wasn’t about to share her feelings about the professor with him, if they were feelings at all. What were they, exactly? She heard Ingrid punch Sylvain in the arm from the other room. They weren’t feelings, she decided, because the professor was older than her (probably) and she had much more important things to spend time on (true) and even though Edelgard couldn’t stop thinking about the way the professor—the way Byleth—had effortlessly handed her a glass of the best mixed drink she’d ever had, there was no reason to do anything about it.</p><p>	Hubert didn’t seem to come through the door, but materialized next to Edelgard at some point in a long black cloak and even more oily hair than usual. Even he dressed up. She made another gin and tonic, first the gin and then the lime and then the tonic, as he explained how foolish it was for everyone to dress as central European nobles when the real origins of fantasy were in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon traditions, until Edelgard asked why he was dressed as a literal wizard which shut him up pretty good. It was true, though, that the prevailing theme wasn’t fantasy so much as frilly shirts and long coats, especially Sylvain who was wearing a blouse, high leather pants, a single earring, and six-inch heels. Even the professor had donned a gold circlet, her thick green hair shimmering beneath it, lounging on the couch and talking quietly with Linhardt and Ingrid like she was one of them. She was, for all intents and purposes. And Edelgard wasn’t.</p><p>	And then Claude and Hilda arrived, and the night started.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Edelgard saw the gold before she saw Claude. They were head-to-toe in glimmering robes, bangles, and necklaces, with a belt that looked like it was out of WWE, but tackier. Their boots were embroidered with gold and they had, instead of steel tips, gold tips that tapped whenever they took a step. Woven into their hair were golden threads, through their twin short braids on either side of their face from which dangled golden hoops, complimenting the larger golden hoops on their ears. Their eyeshadow glittered. They looked incredible. Hilda, whose boots were even taller, shimmered silver. She looked like a final form of Sailor Moon, with metallic silver leggings (how?) and a dress, almost a tutu, so white and lacy that she glowed. Her pink hair, instead of the two familiar ponytails, was braided and then wrapped into two buns like patisserie. Silver speckles were brushed across her cheeks like stars, with swirling pink and white shadow above her eyes and candied lipstick, sickly sweet. The two of them parked their scooters outside.</p><p>	Dorothea screamed when she saw them. “You’re ridiculous,” she said as she hugged Claude, touched their hair, and stared open-mouthed at the two of them.</p><p>	“Thank you!” they said, beaming. “We’re the sun and the moon.” Dorothea screamed again.</p><p>	“You look amazing,” said Ingrid, taking off her helmet. </p><p>	“You don’t fit the theme,” said Hubert.</p><p>	“Shut up, Hubert,” said Edelgard, too quiet to hear. They were radiant, always, the Golden Deer, with their in-jokes and group chat antics. Everyone’s favorite. Even the professor, their head of house who saw them every day, widened her eyes at the sight of them.</p><p>	“Teach!” said Claude, striding over and settling theirself on the couch across from her. “Nice of you to deign to visit us.” Edelgard had positioned herself just so she could see her nod and compliment their outfit. Hilda twirled into the kitchen and started at the sight of Edelgard and Hubert standing motionless in the corner.</p><p>	“Oh!” she said. “Hi Edelgard! What are you dressed as?” Hubert sighed.</p><p>	“I didn’t… have an opportunity. You look fantastic, Hilda.”</p><p>	“Thank you!” she beamed. “Is there any pomegranate juice?” Edelgard handed her the bottle. She poured two glasses, then pulled a flask from somewhere impossible and spiked them heavily.</p><p>	“Fireball and pomegranate juice,” she said. “Claude and I call it The Horse Cock, because it’ll destroy your insides.” She wiggled her eyebrows and disappeared.</p><p>	Edelgard went to the bathroom. She liked parties, liked talking to people and seeing them comfortable, but she could never get comfortable like everyone else. Alcohol helped, and two drinks deep she was starting to feel her head spin in a pleasant way, but it had always been easier to talk when there was a plan and a structure. Classrooms were perfect, or events she organized where she could make decisions and tell people what to do. What was hard was when no one was in charge, and she had to let herself relax with everyone else. She always cooked on Thanksgiving, even when she was a kid, stirring couscous or chopping onions. Planning and execution. Anything to avoid letting her guard down. She sat on the toilet and wrung her hands. Another two hours and she could go.</p><p>	When she emerged, Dorothea was waiting in the hallway. Edelgard nodded and started to walk past her, leaving the door open, when Dorothea grabbed her hand and blocked the way.</p><p>	“Edie,” she said in a low voice, so no one in the other room could hear, “Come hang out with us. I promise you’ll have fun.” Edelgard looked around for an escape.</p><p>	“I am having fun,” she said. “You’ve been a lovely host.”</p><p>	“Edelgard, please,” Dorothea said. She was still sober, her voice confident and reassuring. “You don’t have to stay so far away. We’re friends.”</p><p>	“My apologies if I didn’t—”</p><p>	“Please listen to me? I know you care about these people. I see it every single day. And they care about you, more than you know, so maybe if you let yourself be vulnerable for a moment and let us in we could help you.”</p><p>	“I don’t need help.” Edelgard’s voice went icy cold.</p><p>	“Everyone needs help, Edelgard.” She waited for a response, but nothing came. “Maybe it’s the lesbian yearning, or maybe you just need to talk to someone, but no one can be alone at the top forever.”</p><p>	“I’m not yearning.”</p><p>	“Okay. But this will be over one day, and I hope you have someone to hang onto.” Dorothea went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Edelgard stood for a minute, her breaths deep and steady. She looked down at her hands and the faded scars that traced her palms. She closed them and adjusted her hat. What did she mean, yearning?</p><p>	That was how she ended up by the fridge, talking with Hubert as best she could, making serial gin and tonics and polite conversation with anyone who wanted one. Around her, things exploded. Claude and Hilda chanting ‘SHOTS’ and the resulting scramble quickly became an excuse for clothes to come off (it <em>was</em> getting hot) and secrets to be spilled. Hilda, like she did at every party, got everyone hyped and then disappeared with Marianne. Lysithea dared anyone to challenge her drinking underage as she downed a fifth shot without even a grimace. Caspar and Linhardt, who still insisted they were just roommates, were making out outside the bathroom. Petra’s accent was getting progressively unintelligible as she told a story about a French boy who she fucked before and after transitioning who told her he was ‘petrasexual’. Edelgard’s head was dizzy now, bubbling and happy and lonely at the same time. It was like every party.</p><p>	Except for the professor. She waited on the couch as one by one people got up for more drinks or stronger drinks or to make out somewhere else. Eventually it was midnight and Hubert mixed his last drink for Annette.</p><p>	“Do you want a ride?” he asked as he put another black cloak over his black cloak. Edelgard stared at Claude and their friends in the kitchen, then at the professor sitting alone on the couch, sipping her white wine and admiring the pinups along the wall. On an impulse, the first she’d felt in a long time, Edelgard shook her head.</p><p>	“Okay.” Hubert disappeared without a goodbye. Edelgard, stuck with her decision, went to sit on the couch. The professor’s gaze didn’t move.</p><p>	“How are you enjoying yourself, professor?” Edelgard asked tentatively.</p><p>	The professor nodded. “This is beautiful,” she said, pointing at a particularly scandalous print of a trans girl in a bodycon dress surrounded by bats.</p><p>	“Indeed,” said Edelgard.</p><p>	“It looks like Dorothea,” said the professor. Edelgard choked.</p><p>	“Indeed,” she said again. “Very astute.”</p><p>	“I’m sorry,” said the professor, “That was inappropriate. I’m really quite drunk.” She sighed contentedly and laid her head back on the couch, turning it to face Edelgard. “Are you having a good time? I looked for you.”</p><p>	“I was discussing some plans with Hubert.”</p><p>	“For three hours?” The professor’s tone had shifted, almost teasing.</p><p>	“We have a lot of plans.”</p><p>	“That you do.” She took another sip of wine and swirled it in her mouth. Edelgard couldn’t help notice the way her lips traced the glass, wet from the alcohol, and pressed against each other as she swallowed. They were rich and delicate, waiting to be touched. It took a great force of will for Edelgard to sit and do nothing but blush. Her own thoughts had betrayed her. Her head spun.</p><p>	“Professor,” she said, looking down, “I was hoping to ask you a question—”</p><p>	“Only if I get to ask you one.” She dared to look up. The professor was smiling at her, not too wide but warmly, like she couldn’t control it, and her soft eyes were dilated.</p><p>	“Very well. But I’ll go first.”</p><p>	“Naturally.”</p><p>	“How old are you?” The professor laughed. Not loud, or brash, but a quiet titter that lodged itself in Edelgard’s brain.</p><p>	“I’m twenty,” she said dramatically. “Are you shocked?”</p><p>	“A little,” said Edelgard. “There are rumors you were younger than us.”</p><p>	“I’m younger than you.”</p><p>	“I see why you keep it a secret.” The professor nodded.</p><p>	“I need some sort of authority over Claude. And of course, I would say if someone asked. Except the cops. But you’re the only one who ever has.”</p><p>	“I won’t tell anyone.”</p><p>	“I’m glad you can keep my secrets.” Another sip.</p><p>	“You go,” said Edelgard.</p><p>	“Okay.” The professor shrugged and adjusted her circlet. “Why does everyone call me ‘the professor’ even though I only teach the Golden Deer? Don’t you call Manuela ‘the professor’?” Edelgard smiled in return.</p><p>	“I don’t know,” she said. “Mostly we call her Professor Casagrande. I do, at least—Dorothea doesn’t. But you’re the professor.”</p><p>	“Hm.” The professor swirled her drink. “But you know I have a name.”</p><p>	“I do.”</p><p>	“I don’t believe you.” A long pause.</p><p>	“Byleth.” It spilled out of her. The professor only looked at her, her smile widening, until she turned away.</p><p>	“It’s time I get going,” she said. “I don’t need to see any more of my students disappear upstairs.” Edelgard stood.</p><p>	“I’ll walk you out.” The alcohol had made her brave, say things she had only ever fantasized about saying. The professor gave another look, cool this time. Edelgard felt her confidence wither.</p><p>	“Very well,” she said, and went to get her coat. Edelgard followed her, putting on the red coat and pulling her long white hair out over the back as the professor thanked Dorothea for having her. They walked into the night together. It wasn’t cold, but Edelgard clutched her coat around herself. The professor unlocked her bike.</p><p>	“Are you okay to ride that?” asked Edelgard. The professor nodded.</p><p>	“My place is down a long dirt road,” she said. “No cars.” She took off the circlet and handed it it Edelgard. </p><p>	“Can you return that to Dorothea?” she said, and buckled her helmet. Edelgard nodded. Her cheeks were flush. The professor locked eyes with her. </p><p>	“Good night, Edelgard,” she said in the monotone voice she had always used. Except for tonight. Edelgard almost asked if she’d like to have tea sometime. She almost asked if she’d like to stay, or if she’d like to have dinner, or if she’d like to stay up all night talking and maybe… she just didn’t want her to leave. But the professor pressed the front pedal and rode away out of the single streetlight, her little headlight blinking in the darkness.</p><p>	“Good night!” Edelgard called after her. Her words, too, disappeared into the night. She stood there for a while. It was warm enough out to open her coat and let her shoulders relax. Edelgard was most comfortable alone at night. At home, where there was no one for miles, she would take long walks across the grounds with only her flashlight, down paths lining the edges of the fields and meandering through the woods, ending in a little pond where she could see frogs hopping in summer. Here, even in a small town, it was difficult to relax walking at night. She’d taken to climbing out the window of her apartment onto the little roof above the balcony and sitting there at night, letting the wind pull her hair out of its pins. It was when she felt most herself. Or perhaps, least worried about who she was.</p><p>	Edelgard returned to the party with the aim of saying goodbye to Dorothea and walking home before she got too tired. It had quieted down, just a few people left talking in the kitchen and Annette half-asleep on the couch. She was about to turn around and promise herself to text Dorothea in the morning when Hilda descended from upstairs tailed by Marianne, pink-faced and hair down, lipstick stains visible above her collar in the candy pink that Hilda wore.</p><p>	“Is the professor gone?” Hilda asked, gesturing at the circlet in Edelgard’s hand. She nodded.</p><p>	“She’s just left.” Marianne had flattened herself against the wall.</p><p>	“Do you think she’s into kink?” Hilda leaned in conspiratorially. “I wanted to ask her.” Edelgard struggled to close her mouth.</p><p>	“I didn’t—” She was even more embarrassed than Marianne, her cheeks flush as red as her coat.</p><p>	“Do <em>you</em> know? She likes you more than me. I think she’s a little scared of me.” Edelgard was a little scared of Hilda, too.</p><p>	“No, it didn’t come up.” Hilda shrugged and pulled Marianne by the wrist back into the kitchen where Claude was on their last legs, slapping their own face along to the beat of 80s rock anthems.</p><p>	“By the way, Edelgard,” she said as she slipped past her, “How did you convince her to come?”</p><p>	“What?” Edelgard was still drunk and must’ve missed something.</p><p>	“She said she came because of you. Earlier, when we were sitting on the couch.” Edelgard was speechless again. Hilda shrugged. “You should’ve come hung out.” And then she and Marianne were gone.</p><p>	Edelgard confronted Petra in the living room, where Annette was sleeping on the couch. Petra was perfect, of course. Edelgard’s hair had fallen out the back, messy and a little crazed.</p><p>	“What did you say to Byleth?” she asked her viciously. Petra cracked a grin and widened her glassy eyes.</p><p>	“Mmmnothing,” she giggled, her accent fully returned.</p><p>	“Did you tell her I wanted her to come? I didn’t say that!” Edelgard’s cheeks hurt with all the blushing. Petra shook her head.</p><p>	“I only said … that you would want to hang out!” Petra was leaning to one side, threatening to knock over a lamp made of a nude statuette. “Relax! You want to be her friend!” Edelgard shook her head and moved the lamp.</p><p>	“No, I don’t want to be her friend. I don’t want anything to do with her!” </p><p>	Petra chortled. “Better than friends, then.” She wiggled her eyebrows.</p><p>	“Petra, I swear to god—“</p><p>	“Why do you think she came, Edelgard?” Petra was clearly trying to focus, making her words clear as possible under her slurring. “She came because I told her you wanted her to come!” She threw her hands up in the air, spilling vodka soda on her head.</p><p>	“I didn’t want her to come! I didn’t want this!”</p><p>	“What don’t you want?” </p><p>	Edelgard sighed, drunk and exhausted. “I can’t be around her. It’s not good, it makes me all…” She couldn’t finish. Petra mouthed, ‘Hot’.</p><p>	“That’s not who I am, Petra. I don’t fall in love with professors!”</p><p>	“I didn’t say you did.”</p><p>	“Then stop acting like you’re trying to set us up. I don’t want this. I don’t want her to know how I <em>feel</em> about her!” </p><p>	Petra waited. “You called her Byleth.” Edelgard wiped her face.</p><p>	“She asked me to.”</p><p>	“Mhm.”</p><p>	It was in the bathroom twenty minutes later that Edelgard got the text from Annette that said she had tried to find her in person but was leaving and promised she would keep her feelings about the professor secret, and another fifteen seconds before she realized she’d sent it to the group text. Then her phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with apologies from Annette, and texts from Hubert, and texts from Petra, and texts from Dorothea asking if she was still here.</p><p>	Edelgard stared in the mirror. She looked tired and her mascara was clumpy with sweat. The gold circlet was still in her hand. She raised it to her head, watching her blown-out reflection take off her hat and carry the shimmering crown to her temples, placing it atop her pure white hair. It settled there naturally. That was who she was. She was beautiful, regal, a distant and omnipotent queen. This reflection suited her. Who she had been earlier was untrue—someone nervous, vulnerable and sick with useless feelings which had presumably destroyed her social life. What was she here for, after all? She was an empress, and nothing else.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. judgement (XX)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>edit: this chapter used to have a whole bunch of dorogrid smut at the end that i removed bc it was ... kind of a lot for a innocent Edelgard yearning fit? anyway it's <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22694419">here</a> if you want to read it and that's why this chapter is a little short lol<br/><br/><strong>petranodon</strong> @brigidbabe<br/>literally covered in vodka soda and puke this morning, who am i, claude??<br/>|<br/><strong>mx. despacito</strong> @claudevandamme<br/>i resent this but i respect that you know me</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sunday mornings in early autumn were for walking. Edelgard woke early and left her apartment as the sunlight was beginning to stream into her bedroom windows. She lived at the top of the hill, a long walk from campus made longer by her scenic route past the duck pond and the Toyota dealership. It was a calming walk. Sometimes she brought headphones and listened to soft music or audiobooks, but this morning the light breeze in the trees was too lovely to be drowned out. It wasn’t warm out yet, the air still chilled from the nighttime, so Edelgard took her lined red gloves and her red wool coat with her to cover her thin red jumpsuit. Her apartment was small and spare, smelling slightly of bergamot and flooded with morning light from the south. She closed the door behind her.</p><p>	It was clear what she had done. Everyone would be talking about her confession to Petra the night before, realizing that she was lonely and pathetic and laughing about how desperate she must be to have fallen for the professor. She sighed. It was true, at least. She walked first up the road, past a few low bunglows and stepped onto a well-worn path through the trees. The trees here were different than in Connecticut, taller and more wild, as if the civilized world flowed around them rather than being planted where they could best be appreciated by commuters. A squirrel disappeared into the branches somewhere beside her, its claws skittering against the bark. It was quiet with the sound of morning. The highway passed by a few miles from here, and you could get a Greyhound from the gas station on Route 4, but trucks couldn’t navigate the narrow roads. Across the river there were shops—an L.L. Bean, the only Walmart in the state—but no one ever came here unless they had good reason.</p><p>	Edelgard emerged on a steep road that wound around the houses below it, stepping carefully, her small boots kicking the gravel down the hill. Something caught her eye at the bottom of the street. It was small and orange and sitting perfectly still on a discarded pallet. She continued walking. The cat, with fur the color of falling leaves, stood, gave her a withering look as only cats can do and stepped daintily around the corner to the left. Edelgard made to turn right, like she always did, downtown past the tea shop to campus, but saw the cat waiting for her a few yards away. It perked its ears at her. Edelgard hesitated, imagining the moment when she would run into Dorothea, or Ingrid, or Hubert, and have to watch their wry smiles realize how weak she had made herself. She looked at her watch, then behind her to make sure there was no one to see her follow a cat. She followed the cat.</p><p>	She’d never been to the north side of the hill. The cat, however, seemed intimately familiar, taking shortcuts through patches of trees and walking along high stone walls that lined the road. They passed a yard with two dobermans who eyed them suspiciously, a lending library with a solar panel and a smattering of books (exclusively cozy mysteries and local history) and a young man walking his dog. He waved hello to Edelgard, presumably unaware that she was a maniac following a cat. She raised a hand in return. They passed by a house whose windows were decorated with blue and orange banners, fairy lights around the porch and plastic statues of a lion and a deer standing in the garden with flowers in the last days of bloom. Tacky, she thought. The cat slipped off the road into a culvert. Edelgard stepped off the road, down the patchy slope into the manmade brook and looked into the tunnel. The cat was gone. She climbed back up to the road, crossed it, and climbed down the other side. No cat. She looked around. There was only the man from earlier, watching his dog pee against a telephone pole. Edelgard turned around and started to climb back up the hill.</p><p>	When she arrived downtown it was more than an hour since she’d left and she’d forgotten to bring a protein bar. She could get a sandwich at the tea shop and go the library to finish some work, put in some headphones, and hope no one saw her. That was a good plan. Approaching the tea shop she glanced in the window, just to make sure there was no one from the party last night. From inside, Dorothea waved at her. </p><p>	The horror was instantaneous, panic that overtook her as she stumbled back up the curb, whisking herself down the street and out of sight of the window. Ingrid and Dorothea. Both of them had seen her. They were talking, now, about her confession and what an embarrassment she had been. It would’ve been worse if she had gone in. Not that either Ingrid or Dorothea were bad people, or even that they would hate Edelgard because of this, but Edelgard was supposed to be immune to this sort of thing—now that she had revealed herself no one would give her the respect she had spent so long earning. It was miserable. She breathed heavily, striding even faster.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>	Ingrid woke up sweaty. She tried to roll over, pulling the covers off her, but found nothing. Instead, there was a weight on her chest that she couldn’t escape—touching her stomach, she felt the smooth metal of a steel plate. She was still wearing armor. Beside her, Dorothea was asleep, the covers wrapped around her and wavy brown hair parted across the pillows. Her back was to Ingrid. Standing up, she fiddled with the straps on either side of her torso until the chestplate came off, heavier than it had been the night before. She breathed again. Some memory came back to her about insisting that she could sleep in armor, then negotiating with Dorothea that it would only be the chestplate. Dorothea had said she couldn’t believe someone so beautiful could be so stubborn. That was putting it kindly. Ingrid ran her fingers through her hair and put on a nightshirt, then went downstairs to examine the damage.</p><p>	Everyone had managed to get home, apparently, a surprising first for one of Dorothea’s parties. Ingrid spent twenty minutes washing glasses before wiping down the tables, folding the blankets, and throwing away the plastic cups. She didn’t know who brought plastic cups. Dorothea did not use plastic cups. She put the gin in the cabinet (though she didn’t think it was theirs) and was getting out the vacuum when Dorothea came downstairs in a nightgown. She was the only person Ingrid had ever met that wore an honest-to-god nightgown, but it was lacy and soft and lovely to snuggle against when there wasn’t a chestplate in the way. Ingrid plugged in the vacuum.</p><p>	“I didn’t wake you with the noise, did I?” she asked. “Because I’m about to.”</p><p>	“Wait,” Dorothea said sleepily, “Come here.” She held out her arms.</p><p>	“How’d you sleep?” Ingrid asked, slipping her hands around Dorothea’s waist. She kissed her hair.</p><p>	“Good. How did you sleep, madam knight?”</p><p>	“Terribly. Let’s get breakfast.”</p><p>	“Ok.” Dorothea didn’t move, holding herself to Ingrid’s chest. “Where do you want to go?”</p><p>	“The tea place. They have a lovely chamomile. And hummus wraps.”</p><p>	“Ok.” She put a hand on Ingrid’s cheek. “Don’t you dare vacuum before 10am. And you should shower so I can kiss you.”</p><p>	Ingrid kissed her anyway. “I’ll just be a minute.”</p><p>	It was half an hour, actually, because Dorothea had to do her skincare and Ingrid had to brush out her hair. They left while the birds were still chirping. It was a short walk across the bridge to the tea shop where many students went on Sundays, their only day off, to have breakfast or gossip or finish their homework. The air was clear and fresh as they walked over the river, its waters humming below them and the sunlight reflecting off the turbulent surface winding its way through the little town and east, reaching the ocean some hundred miles away. You could wade in it, though swimming was dangerous with the currents and it was cold even this time of year. Mostly they saw kayakers.</p><p>	Sometime between when they left the apartment and when they arrived at the tea shop they encountered a cat. It was wet around its legs, as if it had been walking in a shallow brook, with orange fur and wide eyes that stared pleadingly at them.</p><p>	“Oh my god—” Ingrid was kneeling on the ground, holding out her hands to its mewling face. She looked up at Dorothea.</p><p>	“It’s cute,” she said, keeping a safe distance.</p><p>	“Thea, come look at her.”</p><p>	“You don’t know it’s a her.” But she knelt down on the asphalt. The cat nuzzled her outstretched fingers. She couldn’t help but smile.</p><p>	“She likes you.” Ingrid was nearly crying, a huge smile across her face. She scratched it under the neck. There was something there, a collar and a dangling tag that Ingrid pulled from the hair and read, ‘Whiskers’.</p><p>	“She belongs to someone already,” said Dorothea.</p><p>	“We should make posters. She’s lost, someone will be looking and then if no one does maybe we can—I mean only if we can’t find the owner—”</p><p>	“Ingrid, someone is missing her.” She was right, of course, but that didn’t make it better.</p><p>	“You’re right.”</p><p>	“Of course. But that doesn’t make it better.” She put her arm around Ingrid. “I’m sorry. Let’s make posters.”</p><p>	The cat had other plans. It slipped out of Dorothea’s hands and ran up the street, disappearing before Ingrid could stand and chase after it. They waited for a while to see if it would return, just another five minutes, but eventually Ingrid gave in and turned back toward downtown.</p><p>	“She’ll find her way back,” said Dorothea. “Someone will be so glad to see her again.”</p><p>	They arrived at the tea shop early enough to sit at a table by a window, say hello to Claude (savoring a sandwich, still in their golden regalia), sip chamomile and comment on passers-by. It was one of their favorite games. Dorothea would point someone out and ask, ‘Who’s your friend?’, and then Ingrid would explain that her friend was Michaela from Venice Beach here on a fishing trip with her estranged aunt, but they broke down on the highway last night and had to stay in the haunted old hotel downtown. And then Ingrid would point out someone else and say, ‘Don’t you know them?’, and Dorothea would talk about Antoine from Iowa City, Iowa, who came here looking for the lover he thought he had lost so many years ago until he saw a photograph in a newspaper that looked just like her. </p><p>	“Him,” Ingrid said. “We don’t know any straight people.”</p><p>	It was past nine and they had finished their tea and hummus wrap (Ingrid) or cobb salad (Dorothea). More students were trickling in, arranging papers and laptops on the tables around them and talking about reports, or whatever econ majors talked about. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the white noise around them and staring out the window. Dorothea’s fingers were tracing Ingrid’s palm when they both noticed her. Edelgard was outside. She walked purposefully, head high and unwavering, except for a single moment when she looked into the tea shop. Dorothea waved. Edelgard’s eyes suddenly widened, seeing the two of them watching her, and her firm posture became nervous. Without another look, she hurried past, out of sight.</p><p>	“That’s strange,” Ingrid said.</p><p>	“She’s probably embarassed about last night.” Dorothea tightened her lips.</p><p>	“I can’t believe Edelgard would be embarrassed about anything.”</p><p>	“Mm.” She looked into her empty teacup. “She might … not know how to handle this.”</p><p>	“Everyone’s had a crush on a teacher,” Ingrid mused. “It’s fine.”</p><p>	“I doubt she knows that.”</p><p><br/>
</p><p>	Claude didn’t come back until morning. Early morning, just as the sun was rising. It was usual of them to sleep late, but this morning they were up early, hung over and sweaty and covered in glitter, traipsing through the street in their absurd costume looking like a cash-for-gold mascot on a walk of shame. They thought about staying and helping to clean but they didn’t want to wake Dorothea, and presumably Ingrid, upstairs on a nice morning. Plus, they didn’t want to clean. They hoped the two of them would get brunch or something.</p><p>	Their stomach burbled. The alcohol had gone in without water or food and now they were paying the price. There was a tea shop on the way home where they could stop for water and a sandwich and a pee, judgement free since Hilda worked there. They wondered if Hilda was working this morning. Anyway, the tea shop had a gender neutral bathroom and good hummus wraps, so they could maybe take an hour to relax before going home to shower and change. Their boyfriend would worry. Claude texted him quickly, sent a selfie of their sweaty but radiant face. He replied with a dovey-eyes emoji. Cute.</p><p>	The sandwich shop was still mostly empty. It was early, and Hilda wasn’t working. She and Marianne were probably lying in bed, whispering sweet nothings to each other and smooching tentatively. Gross. Claude ordered a hummus wrap. They sat in the corner to eat it, on one of the pleather chairs they kept in the back for precisely this sort of thing. It wasn’t uncommon for Claude to eat their hangover here, but usually it was together with Hilda who was either working hung over or eating hung over. They wished she was here. Dorothea and Ingrid came in after a few minutes, said hello and settled by the window to be cute together, talking in those low voices they always used around each other and gesturing outside. Claude finished their hummus wrap and left.</p><p>	It was on the way up the hill that they saw the cat. It was almost as golden as they were, simmering orange, and trotted over to them from up the street.</p><p>	“Hello, Whiskers,” they said. “What brings you to this part of town?” Whiskers mewled.</p><p>	“I see.” Claude sat down beside the cat. The fur around her legs was matted and dirty. “Have you eaten breakfast? Ma’am?” Whiskers gave no indication one way or the other. </p><p>	“Very well. It seems you’ll have to come with me.” They scooped up Whiskers and settled her into their arms.</p><p>	“You comfy, babe?” they asked. She shivered but snuggled against their chest. “Let’s get you home to papa, then.”</p><p>	It wasn’t far back to their house, unique on the street with fairy lights wrapped around the poles on the porch in September and banners hanging in the windows. The plastic statues in the yard Claude had bought last year as decorations for Hanukkah (the deer) and Christmas (the lion). They unlocked the door and set Whiskers down, letting her run off to find their boyfriend. It was his cat, really, and Claude was tolerated. That was alright. Whiskers was a tease.</p><p>	They looked into the kitchen, and finding no one there, went upstairs to shower. They stripped in the bathroom, wiping the makeup off their face with a unconscionable number of cotton balls, taking out their golden weave and stepping into a burning shower. It scalded their skin as they scrubbed their entire body, stripping the top layers of sweat and skin to make it soft and radiant again, with a moisturizer afterwards and an exfoliant for their face. Their boyfriend couldn’t understand why they spend so much time and counterspace on skincare, but he often forgot to shampoo, so he was hardly a reliable judge. Thinking about him brought a smile to Claude’s face. They had asked him to come last night but he was busy working, as always, and wasn’t one to dress up. Edelgard wasn’t either, though, and she had come, albiet dressed like a stagehand at the end of her shift. That wasn’t fair. Poor Edelgard, they thought. It was rough being in love with someone she couldn’t have. She was so competent and composed, all the time, never allowing herself to feel anything with someone else that wasn’t a networking event or a study session. She deserved better.</p><p>	Claude left the mess of last night’s clothes on the floor and walked naked into the bedroom to find something clean and comfortable. First he saw Whiskers, clean and fluffy again, and then Dimitri, sitting in bed stroking her head.</p><p>	“Hey,” he said. “I gave her a bath in the kitchen sink.” Claude beamed.</p><p>	“She’s beautiful.” They climbed onto the bed and kissed him. “Good morning.”</p><p>	“You’re gorgeous,” Dimitri said. “Good party?”</p><p>	“You should’ve been there. Did you see the group chat?” Dimitri shook his head.</p><p>	“Byleth is being yearned at,” they said, climbing off the bed and pulling on a pair of underwear and a pleated floral midi skirt.</p><p>	“By whom? Manuela?”</p><p>	“Edelgard.” Dimitri raised his eyebrows.</p><p>	“She can’t be handling that well.”</p><p><br/>
</p><p>	Edelgard sat in the library with her headphones in. She was working on a paper, accumulating citations and typing notes so quickly her fingers began to hurt. It felt good, the little hurts that she got when she worked too hard. It proved that she was making progress, passionate and successful and able to do what it took to succeed. She stretched her fingers. There were only a handful of other students in the library, none of which she knew personally, a rarity at a small school with only a hundred or so students, and in such a small town where it was hard to escape the eyes of people of who knew you. She was grateful no one had tried to talk to, or worse, comfort her.</p><p>	It was time she took a break. Leaving her coat and her laptop at the desk—honor code—she wandered down into courtyard. The school was mostly one building, a former monastery built in the 1600s by a group of enterprising monks who had quickly discovered that winter in New England was not the same as winter in Italy. It had tall, narrow windows and high ceilings made of local stone. It was beautiful, and a destination for any prospective student who appreciated an intimidating medieval vibe and no central heating, especially with banners of the three houses scattered through the halls and the courtyard filled with color. The flowers were at their last, but the towering elm in the center of the square was still holding on to its foliage. Edelgard sat beneath it. She let her mind relax as much as it could, trying to practice a mindfulness that allowed in the noises of birds, of cars on the street outside, and the wind singing past the clocktower high above. Here, she could almost achieve it. But there was a rattle behind her.</p><p>	Byleth was parking her bike. Edelgard immediately ducked, hiding behind the width of the tree, hoping she hadn’t seen her. Had anyone told her? It hadn’t even occurred to her that someone might have screenshotted Annette’s text, or maybe Byleth had overheard something this morning—the professor, Edelgard chided herself. She was only ‘the professor’. She waited until she head the lock click and the helmet snap and the footsteps disappear into the building before looking up. In the doorway ten feet away, Dorothea was watching her. Her eyebrows were raised, one hand carrying a book and the other on her leather messenger bag.</p><p>	“Hey, Edie,” she said. “Are you okay?” Edelgard nodded. The situation had significantly worsened.</p><p>	“Hello, Dorothea,” she said. “I dropped a pen.”</p><p>	“Mhm.” Dorothea sat next to her. “Do you want to talk about last night? I saw Annette’s text.”</p><p>	“That? No, I am quite all right thank you.” When Edelgard got nervous she stopped using contractions. She sounded like Ferdinand. Awful.</p><p>	“It’s not a big deal,” Dorothea said.</p><p>	“It is of no consequence what people say,” Edelgard said coldly. “Whatever Annette may have overheard was … not correct.”</p><p>	“Edie, honestly, you’re not a robot. You can have a crush. I just want you to know that if you want to talk about it, I want to listen.”</p><p>	“I have nothing to talk about,” she said, brushing the dirt off her legs where she had knelt to hide. “Thank you.” Edelgard stepped around her.</p><p>	“You’re welcome, I guess.” Dorothea sighed. “Edelgard?” But she was gone.</p><p>	Edelgard stomped back upstairs, her head racing. It wasn’t fair, she decided, and she could hear the babyish whine in her voice, but it still wasn’t fair that she had to deal with this. There was enough on her plate without having to repair her reputation and keep everyone quiet and stop feeling how she felt. She wished she hadn’t gone to that party, or told Petra off and accidentally admitted the truth—it wasn’t even true. It was exhausting, and she was already exhausted. It wasn’t even true.</p><p>	Of course, Byleth was in the library. She merely nodded when Edelgard stormed in, halted, went to her desk and collected her things. Normally, Edelgard would nod back. That was strange.</p><p>	“Edelgard,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.” Edelgard turned like a frightened rabbit. “Would you like to have tea sometime?”</p><p>	Edelgard’s mouth opened and shut, her face distorting and then quickly regaining its composure. She was perfectly polite.	</p><p>	“That would be lovely, professor.”</p><p>	“Excellent. Tomorrow morning?” Edelgard nodded. The professor closed the book and placed it in her bag.</p><p>	“Very well,” Edelgard said. “I look forward to it.” The professor did not fail to notice the bright redness that had spread to her cheeks.</p><p>	“Good afternoon, then.” And she was gone. Edelgard sat on the chair, pressing her hands to her face. It was burning. Perhaps Dorothea had been right—it might be prudent to discuss this with someone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. the moon (XVII)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hello ! i have been working on this fic again, and so have rewritten this chapter (with a little drawing). now that i graduated from college i am bored so there’s more on the way soon ! xoxo</p><p><strong>l o r e n z ? ?</strong> @eelbaby<br/>edelgard said simp rights<br/>|<br/><strong>Dreadlord Hübërt</strong> @xXxNIGHTSTALKERZxXx<br/>She did not.<br/>|<br/><strong>dr. sleep but in a fun way</strong> @linhardtttttt<br/>you weren’t there, she did<br/>|<br/><strong>Dreadlord Hübërt</strong> @xXxNIGHTSTALKERZxXx<br/>I am showing her this now.<br/>|<br/><strong>Edelgard von Hresvelg</strong> @EdelgardvonHresvelg1<br/>simp rights.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>First of all, Edelgard made a cup of bergamot tea. She’d come home early to escape being ambushed by anyone else on campus, preferring to work in safety at her own desk in her apartment. It was a small attic room, and Edelgard could afford far nicer, but it had south-facing windows that looked over the little valley, into the town and the river at the bottom. The monastery clocktower was visible above the trees, and the grey shapes below it that made up her college, as well as the small courtyard and a long garden down to a gravel beach to meet the riverbank. It was alone in its age, but the cobblestone main street and the old brick hotel planted the town some centuries old. It was perfect, she thought, and took a sip of tea.</p><p>The Connecticut house where she grew up had been nothing like this. The grounds were nice, the sprawling forests and fields with horseriding paths and deer that could be seen if you waited in silence long enough, but the old brick house had been refurbished and remodeled to be unrecognizable. It was built by a struggling medical purser some two hundred years ago, who had come into an unlikely inheritance from her uncle the governor, a modest home that sat comfortably upon the landscape and operated as a women’s primary school until it was bought by Edelgard’s great-grandfather at the beginning of the century. Only the façade remained.</p><p>There was one room, the attic space accessed only by a narrow stairway, where her best memories lay. In summer Edelgard and her friends and siblings would open the small window and play up there, emerging covered in cobwebs much to her father’s displeasure. On the quiet days when the house was nearly empty he would shake his head and intone a few reprimands before disappearing back to his study. But often he was hosting guests, business or government contacts, people Edelgard only knew as <em>the man with the orange beard</em> and the <em>lady with the wrinkled hands. </em>Then, when his children tumbled down the stairs covered in dust and crackling with laughter, tracking dead bugs across his plush red rugs and bursting into private meetings, his mouth would seize and his eyes shrink and they would be locked in the upstairs sitting-room until late at night when his important friends had left. Then, her youngest siblings already asleep, he would appear in the door and beckon Edelgard come with him. She remembered the wide, cold chair she would sit on as he spoke, the kind of wood so heavy she couldn’t move it herself. He would kneel before her, telling her how she was responsible for the others, how she couldn’t mess around like them anymore, that it was time to grow up so she could be strong for her family.</p><p>“Your strength is your only power, Edelgard. I need you to show me the strength to let go of childish things, the strength to make yourself better than the rest. It will save this family.” He would turn his head towards the other room, where her siblings slept.</p><p>“They will need you strong.”</p><p>Edelgard’s memory faltered. She preferred not to think about it, what happened afterwards, as the voice in her head repeated it over and over, <em>they will need you strong</em>.</p><p>Her phone buzzed just before five. Every day, Edelgard stopped work at exactly five to make dinner, so she let her phone sit for another ten minutes, scribbling hard enough to banish her memories, until the clock above her head cuckooed. She closed her laptop, collated her papers, and checked her phone. Petra had texted her to ask if she wanted to have dinner. Edelgard looked at the clock again. Dinner for her was only an hour. She shouldn’t risk the time wasted, since Petra was likely to bring wine and talk for as long as she could, though it could clear her mind if she sorted out an answer to this business with the professor. Maybe Petra intended to apologize? That wasn’t necessary—it was her own foolishness that landed her here—but it might be nice to hear.</p><p>Petra arrived at twenty past five with a tote bag and a bottle of wine, wearing her signature purple eyeshadow and a long leather duster, removed her sunglasses (though it was nearly dark out) and strode over to Edelgard. She embraced her as Edelgard flinched.</p><p>“Baby,” she said, kissing her on the cheek. “I am so sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have pressed you like that, it wasn’t fair.” Edelgard managed to remove herself from the hug.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said, “though there’s no need to apologize.”</p><p>“I see now that I was not approaching this situation with the professor properly, given your difficulties with love.” Edelgard bristled.</p><p>“I wouldn’t put it like that.”</p><p>“How would you put it?” She took a corkscrew from her tote bag and expertly removed the wine cork. Edelgard’s hangover had been prevented with water and rest, as she was always careful to avoid the risk of a useless morning, but she was reluctant to drink again so soon.</p><p>“I don’t,” Edelgard began, halted, and started again. “My priorities are elsewhere. That is not an issue. The issue is the distraction this … situation brings.”</p><p>“The poets would disagree,” Petra said, especially French.</p><p>“I have read many poets.”</p><p>“But you have not written any poetry.” She handed Edelgard a glass of wine, which she promptly placed on the counter.</p><p>“I don’t think indulging the problem will help, Petra.”</p><p>“Have you ever been in love?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Don’t you want to try it?” Edelgard sighed.</p><p>“What’s the use? Even if I pursued these feelings and did … whatever it is I want to do, the professor does not feel the same, and I would have spent all that time and energy for nothing.”</p><p>“You don’t know how she—“</p><p>“Don’t do that, Petra. I’m not delusional. You can have tea with her every week and get to know her personally and professionally, far better than I ever will, but you are her student. We are not privy to the professor’s feelings, intimate or otherwise. She may like me as a student, and I’m glad if she does, but that is a very different relationship than the kind you and I are talking about, and even putting aside the ethical implications it would only cause trouble to tell her that I may or may not have feelings that I cannot control, so, so…” She couldn’t finish.</p><p>“You do not want to love her,” Petra said.</p><p>“Of course not.”</p><p>“That is very sad.” She was, too, holding her palm to her cheek and letting her wide eyes gaze into Edelgard’s. The stark white light of the kitchen reflected poorly on her makeup, throwing her into an unglamorous picture of pity.</p><p>“Can I tell you a story?” she asked.</p><p>“Very well.” Edelgard shuffled in the fridge. “But we need to prepare dinner.” It was almost five-thirty.</p><p>Petra chopped carrots as she spoke. “I dated a boy named Eric, once. We met working at a chain coffee shop, really terrible, when I was fifteen and he was sixteen. He went to school in the next town over, and I’d seen him at tennis competitions, you know, but I never knew his name. When they hired me to work part-time, and I was just making cappuccinos, he smiled and showed me where they kept the extra pastries. No one else was nice to me. Even then I was thin, and feminine—most people thought I was gay, I think—and he was thick and loud, or—the word like loud?—boisterous, but we could talk about tennis and school and the books we hated to read. He was gay, of course, and I had come out as bisexual to my best friend. She suspected before I did, I think, that there was more going on, but Eric was the first one to ask me with kindness. One night after work we rode the bus together and talked, even when we missed my stop and his as well. The driver made us leave and he kissed me against the bus stop across from the train station.</p><p>“I desired him. He had so much hair for sixteen, all up his chest, and the body that is soft and hard at the same time. And he loved me from the moment he saw me. He told me that all the time, when we would meet in secret after work in an obscure parking lot, and even though we never told anyone I think some people knew. I told my best friend. Her name was Cecile. She said, ‘Are you going to be gay? Is this what you want to do with your life, Petra?’. She didn’t say ‘Petra’, of course, she said my old name, but what she meant was that I was wasting my time and risking my life on this boy that I kept so secret. But Eric—he was different, he was worth it. He stroked my hair after we first had sex and he said I was the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. I told him about the dresses, then, and the times I bought cheap makeup from the drug store at night and sent pictures of myself with a stuffed chest to internet forums to see if they could see through me. He listened.</p><p>“He didn’t have to understand. I don’t think he could, any more than he could understand what it was to desire a woman, but he still loved me. And when we had sex he called me a girl and when he kissed me he held my face like a man holds a woman. It was all I needed to know. His love was safe.</p><p>“Eventually, we were only friends. I learned the words for my feelings and I knew, maybe better than he did, that a man who desires only men could never desire me. But he loved me. That was always true. Love does not hold you back, Edelgard, or waste your time, and it is not a puzzle piece that you can fit into your life. It will change you, and keep you safe while the world is destroyed and rebuilt around you.”</p><p>She swiped the carrots into the pot and sighed.</p><p>“That is a beautiful thing. And I wish that for you.”</p><p>Edelgard had stopped halfway through the potatoes.</p><p>“I’m happy for you, Petra, but I don’t need to change,” she said.</p><p>“You cannot imagine what you need,” said Petra. “If you did, you would be happy.”</p><p>“Do you think I am unhappy?” Edelgard was angry. She had forgotten the potatoes and put down the knife, standing perfectly still with her hands by her sides.</p><p>“You deny yourself everything. The largest and the smallest pleasures.” Petra paused to place her hesitant hand over the rim of the wine glass. “Are you watching the clock? Even now?”</p><p>It was ten to six. Edelgard twisted. “I know what I deny myself. I have to, because I am strong enough to know what is necessary. I let go of childish things. I had the strength to make myself better than the rest.”</p><p>“That choice was made for you,” Petra said, running a nervous finger around the glass, “and it was a long time ago. You can choose differently now. You can choose to learn what it is to love. And to be loved.”</p><p>There was a long silence before Petra continued. “You told me once what happened to your family, in that house in Connecticut. I cried. I thought you would cry, too, but you didn’t. Your face was stone. First you told me that you weren’t strong enough. And then you told me that’s what your father said, when he found you. He looked down at you and said that you hadn’t been strong enough.”</p><p>“Petra, please—”</p><p>“You deserve to be loved. There is a voice in you keeping you from it, demanding that you refuse what would give you joy. Whose voice is it, El? Who tells you what you are?”</p><p>“Don’t call me that.” Edelgard’s hair rose, her eyes wide, her jaw shaking. “Don’t you dare.”</p><p>“Edelgard—”</p><p>“What do you want me to be, Petra? Do you want me to be like you?” She scoffed. “You’ll be nothing. I am already better, stronger than any of you. I don’t need what you have, because it’s only ripples in the stream. Don’t you see it? How one day I will be changing the world forever and you will have nothing but the dregs of men with nothing to give you and a life no one will remember? I am choosing power because I am strong enough. I’ll cut a path all my own, taking the world with me. You are too weak to understand.” Edelgard boiled with rage, her fists clenched behind her, her eyes beginning to leak. She willed them dry.</p><p>“I am very happy,” Petra said softly.</p><p>“Then I don’t need you,” said Edelgard. She knew it was too far, even as she said it, but she wouldn’t take it back. Petra’s eyes, once pleading, became sad, and then distant. She put her glass down and picked up her bag, deliberately as if she was waiting for Edelgard to stop her. But she didn’t, so Petra walked out into the night as the warm smell of cooking carrots and onions wafted out with her.</p><p>Edelgard stood for a long time, alone there in the kitchen, watching the last light of dusk and listening to the ticking clock. The dawning realization that she had done something terribly cruel came slowly, like a dripping faucet filling a tub until it overflowed. Eventually, she sunk to the floor. It was cool tile, pristine white and reflecting light off its shimmering surface. Edelgard’s red jumpsuit hurt to look at. It was all too bright, so she closed her eyes and laid her head against the cabinet. She’d only wanted to prove Petra wrong. Somewhere, in all her confusion, she wondered if she had. After a moment of consideration, she still didn’t know, so she took the feeling and tidied it up, placed it in a box, and hid the box deep inside her mind. It was gone. The clock cuckooed six. Edelgard rose, scraped her dinner into a bowl, walked to the desk, and returned to work.</p><p> </p><p>A note inviting her to tea arrived in Edelgard’s mailbox sometime before dawn. <em>At nine this morning</em>, it said, <em>you are cordially invited to take tea in the office of Professor Byleth Eisner</em>. It was scrawled in a swift, swooping hand. Edelgard stood outside her apartment with a headache, reading the note and listening to the deafening birdcalls that invaded every quiet space before noon. She had awoken with the horrible feeling that something was wrong. Remembering the previous night, she had walked outside still in her pajamas to punish herself with cold air. It wasn’t cold enough. Her head was pounding. Returning to the apartment, she had a glass of water and scoured her room for an advil before spotting Petra’s sunglasses still on the dinner table. They were lopsided, lying there abandoned. She put them in her coat pocket.</p><p>It went without saying that Edelgard was a bad person. She had always suspected as much, ever since she realized that ambition was uncommon and that her motives, however noble, were the same as those that had done great harm in the world. She tried to be good, taking ethics classes and reading Kant in a desperate attempt to foil her innately evil nature, but it was clear that she had failed and that she was better suited to renouncing her friendships altogether. Even if Petra had been wrong, and she had been right, it seemed unimportant, as she remembered all the times Petra had comforted and loved her. Guilt followed her all the way down the hill to campus, where she sat on a bench in the courtyard and waited to be smote, or something. She tried to be excited about having tea with the professor, but the familiar flutter in her stomach didn’t feel like nerves so much as grim dread. It was nearly nine.</p><p>Edelgard waited outside the professor’s office for three minutes, when the hour came, and another five as she feverishly checked and re-checked her watch. The professor appeared two minutes after that, wiping her forehead and running her fingers through her hair.</p><p>“Bike lanes,” she said. “Nobody respects bike lanes. Hello, Edelgard. Come on in.”</p><p>The professor’s office was small and untidy, tucked in the top corner of the monastery where there was good light but low ceilings. A small desk sat in the corner, piled with papers, while the center of the room was occupied with three comfortable-looking chairs of various shapes and upholsteries. The coffee table that stood between them was clear except for a small pile of books and a tea set. The professor took the kettle from beside her desk, where hung a large painting of the sea.</p><p>“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. Edelgard nodded politely.</p><p>The first thing she did in any new place was look at the books. She examined those on the table, each one red leather bound and heavy in her hands. ‘A Storm of Swords’, it read. The others had similar titles. ‘A Feast for Crows’. Edelgard put them down. Doubtless, the professor was reading texts she wouldn’t comprehend without a graduate degree, so she didn’t bother looking inside. There was a bookshelf, too, filled mostly with Greek philosophers and classics, some of which she recognized and all of which were marked up heavily on every page. A dead fireplace sat across from the chairs. It was cleaned of ashes for the summer, and had a small mantle upon which sat a wooden box, finely decorated with silver clasps and a minute lock that hid in the recess of the wood. Beside it stood a photo of Jeralt and his daughter as a child. Edelgard walked to it, letting her hand touch the cheap plastic frame. A smudge of dust came off on her finger. Byleth’s hair had been darker as a child, and while she recognized Jeralt’s stern face from staff pictures years ago, he looked happy in this one, his arm wrapped lovingly over Byleth’s shoulders. Byleth, she thought, turning the name over in her mind.</p><p>“Did you ever meet him?” asked the professor. She stood watching her with the kettle in hand, her face oddly open and nostalgic.</p><p>“No,” said Edelgard. “I never had the pleasure.”</p><p>“He hated it here,” she said, walking to the table and pouring hot water into the teapot. “I hope you like bergamot.”</p><p>“It’s my favorite.”</p><p>“I suspected so.”</p><p>“Did you and Professor Jeralt live here long?” The professor laughed.</p><p>“He wasn’t a professor. But no, he only returned when I came here and passed soon afterwards. Most of his time at the school was before I was born.” She put the kettle down.</p><p>“He worked on the grounds. The flowers in the courtyard, the garden behind the monastery, the reason that elm hasn’t died like all the other elms in New England—that was his doing. After I was born, he stayed for several years, but I hardly remember it. We travelled, and he worked. I studied, which is how I came to be mostly qualified to teach at your age, although I suspect they wouldn’t have hired me if Jeralt hadn’t promised to come back. He resented that. Said it was just like them to cut short a promising student’s academic track for an old gardener.” She shrugged. “But I like it here.”</p><p>“Is it odd, being the same age as your students?” Edelgard poured the professor a cup of tea, and then herself. She held it tenderly as she sat at the edge of the red velvet chair.</p><p>“It isn’t, though I was nervous it would when I started. I never had peers, or friends, and so distance comes easy to me.” The professor casually sipped her tea.</p><p>“Would you like to know,” she said, “why I invited you to tea this morning?”</p><p>Edelgard nodded. “I was curious. I fear I rather embarrassed myself the last time I saw you.”</p><p>“You’re much calmer today.” She seemed to think for a moment, holding her teacup in front of her face and staring into the steaming liquid.</p><p>“I was wondering, Edelgard,” she said, “if you would be interested in helping me with a project. I don’t know if you have much of an interest in local geography, but before he died my father tasked me with finding a number of items, a sort of buried treasure, across the surrounding area. Before you ask, I don’t know what these items are, only that they come in these.” She took from the mantle the little wooden box, and pulling a key on a chain from underneath her shirt she unlocked it.</p><p>“He was a mysterious man, even to me, and he left very little behind. This was one of his few possessions.” She pulled from the box a folded sheet of yellowed paper, upon which was written a list in pencilled hand. “These are the locations where the boxes are hidden, or so I assume. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t know much myself.” She paused to take another sip of tea.</p><p>“The trouble is, I have attempted to find these before, and failed. And I do not own a car. I thought perhaps some help would be necessary, so I am asking you to help me recruit a few students. I realized the other day that you would be perfect for this, knowing them better than I do, who would be interested in this sort of thing, and you have a command over them that would serve you in selecting the right candidates. I realize this is more than a little absurd—” she set the teacup down, “but Jeralt, whatever his reasons, left me this, so I would like to see it done. If not, I certainly understand.”</p><p>A series of emotions cantered through Edelgard’s head. Surprise, at the trust of the professor, and then excitement, at the prospect of spending more time with her, and determination, to make her proud—but what came last, and what lingered, was regret.</p><p>“Professor, I—” She struggled to contort her face into the appropriate shape. “I don’t know if I am the right person for this job.”</p><p>The professor failed to conceal her disappointment. “That’s perfectly alright, Edelgard, I know you have a great many commitments. It is only a pet project, after all.”</p><p>“No, please don’t misunderstand, I want to, but I don’t know if—” she struggled for the right words, “—if I can do what you ask. My relationship with my classmates is… not as good as it once was. I think I am ill-suited for their respect.”</p><p>“I am surprised to hear you say that.” The professor put down her tea. “What makes you think so? They have always spoken well of you.”</p><p>“I have made a mistake that I don’t know if I can take back.” She found herself beginning to tear up and immediately chided herself, breathing slow to settle her emotions.</p><p>“Can you tell me what happened?” She waited. Edelgard took a long, slow breath. This was humiliating.</p><p>“I hurt someone. A friend.” It sounded so stupid, childish and whiney. She was meant to be better than this.</p><p>The professor nodded. “I’ve hurt people close to me, too.” Edelgard watched her remember something, buried behind her eyes. “Do you regret it?” she asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Edelgard whispered. Then louder, “Yes. Something came between us, something about me. I don’t really understand it. But I know I hurt her and I want to fix it.” She found herself, in the presence of the professor, looking at her feelings in a way she never had before. Like she was seeing them for the first time, instead of hiding them away. Part of her was scared, and part of her relieved.</p><p>“Whatever has happened, Edelgard, I’m sure you can make right. You want to be kind, as is clear to me and everyone around you. If you are sorry, and you work to repair the damage, you will be forgiven.”</p><p>Edelgard furrowed her brow, willing the tears to stop coming. “I won’t, professor. I’m not a good person. You don’t understand.”</p><p>“A good person isn’t something you <em>are</em>, Edelgard.” She poured more tea. “It’s something you <em>do</em>.”</p><p>Edelgard listened. A thought drifted through her mind asking why it was now that she was asking for help, and why Byleth, rather than Dorothea or anyone who had ever tried to help her. But the professor’s words stayed, and when Edelgard opened her eyes she had leaned forward, holding out her hands, her sleek blue-green hair tucked behind one ear and draped across her forehead. Her wide eyes stared into Edelgard’s.</p><p>“Maybe another time we can talk about why you said what you did,” she said softly. “I think for now it would be good to apologize to your friend. She deserves your sincerity. And Edelgard—” The professor sat back in her chair, relaxed and present. “If you’d like to talk more about it, you are welcome to come with me on a little box-hunting journey tomorrow. And you needn’t make yourself uncomfortable talking to the other students. My offer still stands.” She shrugged. “In fact, it may be more comfortable to keep it between us.”</p><p> </p><p>Edelgard sat on the roof outside her apartment window far past sunset. In the daylight, people could see her up there, but once night settled over the valley she was invisible against the shadowy house. The attic room felt small. She got home late and ignored her work, instead fixing some soup for herself and eating it out on the shingles, letting the cool wind chill her skin as night deepened. The moon had risen before the sun had set, soft white against a pale blue sky, now brilliant in a wash of stars.</p><p>Two years ago Edelgard had arrived in this homely town by car, driven by a stony-faced henchman of her father’s all the way from the house in Connecticut to the door of her new apartment. They had left in the early morning of a foggy August day. Her father had stood impassive on the granite steps as the driver carried Edelgard’s belongings for the next four years to the car, packing them deftly, while Edelgard waited inside, wondering if she should say goodbye to the house. She knew even then that she would never come home here. It would be hers, one day, and she would have to return to see to its fate, but in those last minutes she knew that she was leaving behind her childhood. Or maybe, she thought as she heard the engine start, she had left it behind a long time ago. Her father hugged her on the steps. He spoke in her ear:</p><p>“This will make you strong, El. Remember—” He pulled away and placed his hands, already starting to tremble with age, on her shoulders. “The strongest path is hardest to cut, because you must cut it all your own.”</p><p>The driver didn’t talk, and Edelgard wasn’t much for music, so they rode the three hours in silence. The fog lifted as the ocean grew further, and soon the six-lane highways turned into a narrow hillside route, the verdent wind of the forest taking her someplace far away. The college, highly reputable and a legacy for the von Hresvelgs, was nonetheless far from the manicured country Edelgard had known. They arrived before noon, driving down Main Street and past the walls of the college, from which hung banners welcoming the incoming class. Then thye passed through the small downtown, the old hotel and the tea shop and the vibrant stationery store, and finally past the train station towards Edelgard’s apartment up on the hill. As they passed the station, Edelgard saw out the tinted window a girl pulling a large suitcase and a heavy duffel. She looked up the steep hill.</p><p>“Stop,” she said, the first time either she or the driver had spoken all morning. He stopped the car. She heaved herself over to the other seat and threw open the wide black door. The girl halted on the side of the hill.</p><p>“Would you like a ride?” Edelgard asked. “It looks a rather difficult walk.” The girl seemed to consider for a moment, then wiped the sweat from her brow and tossed her things into the back seat.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said, her voice slightly accented. She closed the door and smiled, taking off her sunglasses. Her hair, braided thick down her back, was a deep purple that shimmered in the sunlight, matching her purple eyeshadow reaching around the side of her face. Glamorous, Edelgard thought. Beautiful, she thought, more shyly.</p><p>“My name is Edelgard,” said Edelgard, and extended her hand.</p><p>“Petra,” said the beautiful girl. “Are you a new student as well?” Edelgard nodded.</p><p>“Where are you headed?” she asked, motioning at the driver. Petra gave her address, and the car rumbled into motion again. They sat for a few moments in silence.</p><p>“Is this—”</p><p>“Do you—”</p><p>They spoke over each other, then waited for each other, then laughed.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” said Edelgard. “I’m somewhat nervous being here.”</p><p>“Me too. I only arrived last night, and haven’t caught up with the jet lag yet.” Petra seemed to relax. “Do you know which house you’ll be in?”</p><p>“The Black Eagles. My father and his father were as well.”</p><p>“I am in that house too!” Petra seemed delighted. “Well, we will be seeing a great deal of each other. And thank you, the walk would have exhausted me.”</p><p>“Are you nervous to start classes?” Edelgard asked.</p><p>“A little, of course. It’s nice to know I won’t be alone, at least.” It seemed strange, how comfortable she became as soon as she knew that Edelgard was new as well. Edelgard had assumed, from what her father had told her, that it would be a time to compete with every other student. Petra didn’t seem to think of that at all.</p><p>“Are you living in town?” she asked. Edelgard nodded. “Then you and I will have to have dinner sometime,” she said, smoothing her purple hair in the reflection of the window.</p><p>“Certainly,” said Edelgard. “I wonder if everyone is as kind as you.” It was more to herself than to Petra, but she returned a strange look.</p><p>“Don’t you think so?” she said. Her eyes demanded an answer. Edelgard’s cheeks flushed.</p><p>“I hadn’t planned on making many friends, if I’m honest,” she said. “I imagined most people would be like me.”</p><p>“Are you unkind?” Edelgard didn’t know how to answer that question. The car slowed outside Petra’s address.</p><p>“I—” The gears in Edelgard’s mind spun furiously.</p><p>“I know, if you don’t,” said Petra as she got out of the car with her suitcase and duffel. “I know who you are, Edelgard. You stopped to help me when I needed it.” And she closed the door behind her.</p><p>On the roof outside her apartment window, as the now-familiar night air washed over her, Edelgard wiped her face, took out her phone, and called Petra. It was short, and difficult, and maybe the first time Edelgard had apologized sincerely, but it was done. And Petra had said, as she always did, that she was sorry to push Edelgard like she had, in ways she knew would hurt. It seemed afterwards as if it wasn’t as bad as Edelgard had thought. The night calmed her.</p><p>As it often did recently, her mind arrived at the professor. She had laughed at something Edelgard said, a joke, which had hardly happened before. Usually people assumed Edelgard didn’t make jokes. The professor, though, saw her. She thought about when they could have tea again, and maybe she could tell the professor how much better she was doing. She imagined the professor hugging her, telling her how kind and beautiful she was, her soft hair on Edelgard’s cheek. She imagined the professor holding her hand and placing her face by hers, whispering secrets, touching her back and pulling her close to dance in the firelight, making her tea and falling asleep under a blanket together beside the coals. It was a lovely dream. For the first time, Edelgard didn’t banish it in shame. She watched as the professor floated through her thoughts, someone to hold onto. Maybe the dream was worth keeping.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>